Origin of Homeopathy- A Brief History

Usain Bolt

Swami Vivekanand

Dr Samuel Hahnemann

Rabindranath Tagore

David Beckham

Dr Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan

Lindsay Wagner

M.K.Gandhi

Paul McCartney

Prince Charles

Queen Elizabeth

The Origin of Homeopathy

The origin of homoepathy is both interesting and intreguing. About 200 years back humanity was still recovering from the evil clutches of the dark ages, the difference between a doctor and a butcher was that, one chopped off human flesh and the other animal meat. Medical procedures were so bizarre and inhumane that they were no less than torture. Procedures such as bloodletting, veinesection, leeching, cupping etc were being used to treat illness.

Pharmacology was still at its infancy and medicines prescribed by the doctors had little or no relation to their actions on disease. The apothecaries or drug mafias as we would recognise them today had a stronghold over the entire medical practice. Offending the apothecaries would be like offending the Pope himself!

Very few doctors ever had the courage to challenge the established order of medical practice, and if they dared they would be systematically ostracised from medical fraternity. Out of the very few people who dared to question the very base of traditional medical practice, the one name that vocally stands out today is that of Dr. Christian Fredrick Samuel Hahnemann.

Dr. Samuel Hahnemann was born on 10th April 1755 in Meissen, Saxony near Dresden in Germany. As a young man Hahnemann became proficient in a number of languages like English, French, Italian, Greek, Latin, Arabic, Syriac, Chaldaic and Hebrew. A bright student Hahnemann passed his medical education from the University of Erlangen.

After graduating as an MD Dr. Hahnemann started his practice in Saxony, but soon disillusioned by the gut wrenching medical procedures of those time that did more harm than good he left his practice and took up a job as a translator of books. While constantly trying to find a way to treat humans more humanely Hahnemann stumbled upon the writings of William Cullen ‘A Treatise on Materia Medica’.

The book indicated that cinchona bark or Peruvian bark was used to treat malaria because of its astringency. Hahnemann was an intellectual man. He quickly understood that something was not right as the other astringents that were far stronger than cinchona had no effect on malaria. Hahnemann started self-experimenting; he took 4 ounces of raw Peruvian bark daily until one day he started showing symptoms of malaria like intermittent high temperatures with shivering and chills.

Hahnemann repeated the same experiment on his wife to the same results, and then he experimented with other villagers, every one of them showed similar symptoms. Suddenly the truth was no more hidden from him; Hahnemann had planted the seed of Homeopathy on the bosom of Mother Nature.

He laid down the first and the highest law of homeopathy; Likes cure Likes, or Similibus Curantur, or as in a lay man’s term diseases can be cured by substances that cause similar disease like symptoms!

200 years have passed, many stalwarts like Dr Herring, Dr J.T Kent, our very own Dr Mahendra Lal Sarkar , Dr Farokh J Master, Dr Rajan Shankaran, have nourished and nurtured the sapling of homeopathy into such a mighty tree that today it is the world’s second most sought after treatment procedure with over a billion followers in the world. India alone commands nearly 300 million followers of homeopathy.

Hahnemann’s dream to develop a procedure that was harmless, gentle, trustworthy and speedy has finally become one of the widely practiced medical procedure in the world and shall continue to grow in decades to come.

The general awareness in public has increased, every patient is well aware of the harms of the allopathic medication; side effects from allopathic treatment procedure have pushed many patients to seek refuge under the homeopathic mode of treatment, and homeopathy with open arms have accepted their refuge and provides them with quality health care.